Brother North-wind's Secret REVEALED!
The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 15 May 2000
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2262

Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright
in each message remains with the person who wrote it.

Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original
archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than
retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.

==============================================================================

William Ansley — 15 May 2000, 23:44

> I wrote:
> How about this one: What's the difference between G. Wolfe and J. 
> Crowley? Well, Wolfe would would never come right out and tell you 
> what Brother North-wind's Secret is, but Crowley does, after pausing 
> for a few pages to keep you in suspense.

Now that I have paused a couple days to keep you all in suspense, 
here is more detail. Book Two of LB is called "Brother North-wind's 
Secret". Chapter II of this Book starts off with several school 
children taking turns reading a children's story of the same name. In 
the story, a Meadow Mouse, who has never seen Winter is questioning 
animals to find out how to prepare for it. A Crow tells him that one 
thing he needs to know is Brother North-wind's secret, which is the 
answer to the question, "What is the one good thing about Winter?" 
But the crow won't tell and neither will Brother North-Wind.

Before the last child can finish the story, just before the secret is 
revealed, the teacher (Smoky Barnable) interrupts him. So far, so 
Lupine. But, only a little over 3 pages later, Smoky recalls the 
answer (he read the story before): "If Winter comes, Spring can't be 
far behind."

My expectation, if this was a Wolfe story, is that the answer would 
be revealed less directly or at a greater remove from the question or 
not given at all.This isn't to say that Crowley doesn't have his 
secrets, there are plenty of ambiguities and mysterious goings-on in 
LB.

William Ansley

------------------------------------------------------------------------------